


Your Words are a Path

by Nellycar



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Lost - Freeform, Love, M/M, Nightvale, welcome to nightvale - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3501956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellycar/pseuds/Nellycar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil has lost the two most important things in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Words are a Path

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my amazing sister, Nightmarekitt. This would have been a disaster without her.
> 
> This is a work of Fanfiction, using characters from the Welcome to Night Vale world, created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Both Carlos and Cecil are characters created and owned by Mr. Fink and Mr. Cranor. I do not claim any ownership over them or their world. The story I tell here is of my design and for entertainment only. A most heartfelt thanks to Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, without them there would be no Night Vale.

It was a whisper. Cecil could even convince himself he had just imagined it, if he wanted. But, No! There it was again! Sighing he took a sip from the flask he kept in his right pants pocket. If you see something, say nothing, and all that.

  
Cecil shook his head. Carlos never liked that rule--- Didn’t like that rule, Cecil winced as he told himself for the millionth time. Carlos wasn’t dead. Carlos couldn’t be dead.

  
He had a way with words; they always came to him, dancing around and off of his tongue. He could see the way they swirled, caressing his body before they would disappear from sight. His third eye following the path the words took around him. Carlos always teased him about his third eye, which rested in a perfectly respectable place directly under his left eye. He always said the way it swirled and followed the words Cecil spoke would cause it to fall off his face and roll away.

  
Carlos…

  
The words had never failed Cecil before. Yet now, when he needed them most, they refused to dance with him. They refused to reassure him and let him believe the lie, Carlos was alive. That in any moment he would walk through that door.

  
The last three weeks had been horrid. Cecil had mourned from inside Carlos’ Lab. He had mourned while wearing the lab coat Carlos rarely took off. And because Cecil was mourning, Night Vale did too. Their voice had gone quiet. It had been three weeks since their radios had turned on and shared that gorgeous voice with them all. Silence had been the only thing broadcasted from the station. Even management was quiet.

  
Furiously, Cecil blinked the tears from his eyes as he pulled the lab coat more tightly against his exhausted frame. He could just make out the light of the Arby’s sign from his perch on one of the stools in the lab. He was tired. So very tired of being wordless. So very tired of not sharing his words. Mostly he was tired of being without Carlos.  
It was silly. Cecil had spent more of his life without him than with, yet he had never felt as lost and alone as he had now. He had never been without his words. He had at least always had those. One of the many instruments in the lab pinged and lit up. Cecil paid it no mind. The odd machines seemed just as stubborn as he was. Continuing to work as if Carlos would suddenly appear to exclaim and flutter about them. In fact the only machine that never came to life anymore was the radio. Drawing another swig from his flask Cecil threw a disdainful look over at the thing.

  
He knew he was breaking the law. Instead of ignoring the radio, he was daring it to inform him it was picking up a signal by flashing its little light again. Just the thing he needed to drink to forget. Cecil narrowed his eyes and was about to sit back and mock laugh to declare his victory over the contraption, when the unthinkable happened.

  
Impossibly, the blasted speakers crackled.

  
His mouth fell open and quickly closed, as the speakers crackled again. Cecil was holding his breathe. Laws be damned, something was happening. He stood still, eyeing the small thing. Perhaps management had grown tired of his moping. Maybe Night Vale had replaced him as their voice. God knows that without Carlos the words just didn’t come to him like they used to. There was nothing specific coming over the speakers, though; it was just white noise. He began to walk towards it when he heard a different sound come from the radio.

  
It sounded like some sort of rustling. Was it paper? Leaves? Someone must be in his studio. Anger churned through Cecil. All of the time and years and bodily fluids he had given that station and this town and this is how they repay him? They replace him without so much as a singing telegram? If he hadn’t already been frozen in place when the white noise had faded, the voice that came out of the speakers next certainly would have caused him to cease movement.

  
“Hello? Cecil?”

  
Letting out a cry, Cecil ran to the radio. Clutching it with both hands.

  
“Carlos?! Is it really you?”

  
“Oh Cecil, who else would it be?”

  
“You died, “ Cecil whispered. “I saw it.”

  
He could hear the smile in Carlos’ voice.

  
“As if you would let me die.”

  
“ I’m not sure I understand.”

  
“ Your voice, Cecil. The words kept me alive in a way. Remember that day? You held onto me and told me that I was not allowed to die. It was against the law and you forbade it. So I didn’t.”

  
Cecil did remember that day. It was horrible. The librarians had escaped The Library. The street cleaning was going on and Tamika was nowhere to be found. The Secret Police were on one of their bi-weekly camping trips so they could be of no help. That day, Cecil wished angels were real, as he held a dying Carlos desperately in his arms. Begging for someone to help them as the scientist faded away, completely disappearing. He jerked himself out of the memory when he realized Carlos was still talking.

  
“I’ve been trapped. It’s an odd place. Everything is just dark. Kind of like a night without stars or the moon. I think I’m in some sort of void. I’ve just been wandering around. I wish I had some of my instruments or even just my lab coat, so I could run some tests. A scientist is nothing without his lab coat.”

  
Laughing, Cecil rested his head on the radio. Trapped? A trapped Carlos was something he could handle. Trapped was something they could and had overcome.

“Carlos, if you have been alive this whole time, why are you just now telling me? How are you talking to me now?”  
A frustrated noise came through the speakers then.

  
“ I don’t know how I’m talking to you. All I know is that from the moment I first got here, I could hear your voice. Then all of a sudden, it stopped, and that’s when I decided to say something and started talking to you. I’ve been trying to follow your voice, because I think it can lead me out of this void. But you stopped talking.”

  
“What was I saying?” Cecil asked. Because he had a duty to collect the facts so he could report them on his next show and not at all because he was nosy. Or worried that he might have said something embarrassing.

  
“You were talking about home and the weather and your interns like you always do. But you sounded much younger. It’s like I was listening to old recordings of you. You sounded very cute.”

  
Cecil blushed and found himself stammering, “Thank you.”

  
“Oh! But Carlos! How will you get home? I miss you. I want you home,” he finished in a whisper.

  
“I miss you too, Cecil. I think if you keep talking I can follow your voice home.”

  
For Carlos, Cecil could talk for an eternity. Straightening to his full height and still holding the radio, Cecil walked right out of the lab and began heading towards the station. His voice had been the first thing Carlos had heard in this town. The first thing that welcomed him. Now it would be the thing that brought him home.

  
Cecil felt the words bubbling up inside him. He smiled when he saw the station ahead of him. He had been away far too long. It was time to go to work.


End file.
